


Spiral staircase

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Growing Up, Magical Realism, Multi, Romance, Sexuality, Trans phobia, transgender character, underage voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4541763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin is seven when he meets the love of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spiral staircase

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what to say about this, not really. I'm open to all kinds of criticism, but please don't flame. So; the warnings.  
> Underage, because there's a couple of non-graphic sex scenes, between 16 year olds, and one between a 16 year old and an 18 year old. There's no non con, though.  
> Voyeurism, though not in an explicit way (as in two kids listening in on a couple having sex).  
> Do tell me what you think. :)

When Merlin was seven years old, he met the love of his life. 

They were playing on the trampoline Uther bought Morgana for her birthday, them, Will and little Freya, who wanted to touch the sky and bring back seven fluffy clouds, one for each person she loved. One for Merlin, one for Hunith, and Will and Morgana and Gaius. She didn't know who else. Morgana said she was sweet. A cloud, she said, was the fluffiest and the happiest in the world. And that was when  _she_ came out of their house. 

"Father wants the lot of you in for tea." she said, Morgana's mean big sister. Her name was Elizabeth, and they never noticed her much, not until that day. She was tall and freckly and thought they were  _babies._ "And don't encourage that sort of silly talk, Morgana."

"It's not silly!" Interrupted Merlin. "Freya's being sweet."

Elizabeth smirked. "And who's going to bring Freya back when she gets lost in the sky? You?"

Her eyes were terribly, terribly blue.

He was never the same again.

 

Elizabeth was eleven to Merlin's seven. He remembered her from that summer's day; gangly, and blonde, with spots popping over her sun coloured skin. He remembered the teasing lilt of her voice, on the bare cusp of adolescence. He remembered that she was beautiful.

He remembered that he fell in love with her that day.

 

Morgana was clever and funny, and Merlin thought she was great. He loved going to her house to play with her, to sit with her and read the books in that huge library she had. The library was at the top of a winding staircase that only Merlin could see, because no one else thought that it was possible to fit a library that big inside Mr Penn's house. Morgana came up with him some days, but she never read anything. All the books written had been signed by someone called AP, and Morgana didn't know who that was. One day, she peered in to see what Merlin was reading, and asked him what language it was in.

"Why, English, of course!" 

Morgana pointed at the letters, and only then did Merlin realize that it was hardly English at all, but some sort of squiggly line language that AP had coded the books in. Strange he hadn't noticed it before. But he went on reading, without a care in the world.

AP, he thought, must be a strange and clever man, to build a library that only Merlin could understand. He was rather sure that AP did not, in fact, exist.

Yet.

He told as much to Elizabeth, when she came in, and handed him a milk and a glass of cookies. "You're an idiot." she said with the bare hint of a smile.

He never found the library again. But Elizabeth was always around when he came to play. And that was good enough.

 

"You're a pretty girl." He told her one day. She frowned as if he had let a bad smell into the room, and walked away.

 

He remembers that winter with startling clarity. Morgana was playing the Virgin Mary in their nativity play; and he had been cast as Archangel Gabriel. He loved the part where he flew across the hall and landed on the stage. There were no ropes involved.

Elizabeth picked them up from school. With the passing summers she'd grown tall and strong for a thirteen year old. He was still in love with her.

They sat outside, on the backdoor steps, staring at the growing layer of snow. Uther had cleared out the front of the house, but each time he tried to clear the back, the snow appeared, with twice the depth as before. 

"Let's make snow angels," Merlin said. Elizabeth smiled, madly radiant.

They lay with their backs to the snow, spreading out like starfish, creating the billowing cassock and the wings. Elizabeth's was larger than his, but they looked like they belonged side by side. He was going to say so, when she sat up, startled and paling, looking down at her lap with terrified alarm.

"No." She whispered, soft as a phantom's kiss. "This isn't supposed to happen." And ran back to the house.

Merlin stood there, foot deep in the snow, staring at the crimson trail, that glittered stark against the white white ground.

 

He hadn't seen her much after that. Just enough to know that he loved her.

 

Time, like a lonely snail, crept by without gathering any attention. One day, he woke up to find that he was almost as tall as his mother, and that Morgana's chest had started jutting forward, like a woman's.

 

They sat on the landing outside Elizabeth's room, listening to the bed creaking and the faint moans, the symphony of lovemaking that ran in deep crescendos.

His name, Morgana said, was Leon, and he was an old family friend. He was two years older than Elizabeth, and was moving to Edinburgh this summer for Uni. They sat outside her door, flustered by the sheer exhilaration of listening in on something they were not meant to hear, though they did not understand with perfect clarity, what it was they were intruding on. (In later years, he would look back with tender mortification at his childhood insolence, and berate himself for trespassing on her privacy, even as his veins burned with jealous fury.)

They hid themselves as Leon let himself out, fixing the buckle of his trousers. Merlin felt Morgana creep away. He tiptoed to the half shut door, and pushed it open.

Elizabeth sat up on the bed, naked under the white,cotton sheet. She didn't seem surprised when he came in. And he only noticed her blue blue eyes.

"Marry me." he said abruptly. "Marry me, Elizabeth."

She wrapped the sheets tighter around her frame as she came to him. Blue blue eyes stared at him for a moment before bow-bitten lips pressed themselves to his forehead. 

"Yes Merlin." She says. "I think I shall." And she left him there, watching after her as she walked the spiral staircase, the sheet trailing after her like a bridal veil.

 

The house burned down to the ground that night.

 

Merlin stood with his mother and Will and Freya, watching the firemen salvage the house. Morgana sat with them, too afraid to cry. They saw Uther clench his fists tightly and stare impassively at the raging inferno.

 

The funeral is a closed coffin affair, and two weeks later, Merlin realized that he alone, of all the people they knew, remembered that Elizabeth Penn had truly existed.

 

Merlin is sixteen when he fucks Morgana for the first (and last) time. It is their first time with another person, and it is an encounter that leaves them both wanting. When she turns away, he slips on Elizabeth's old dressing gown over his naked body, and walks barefoot to Will's house.

The following morning, he tells Freya and Hunith that he thinks he is gay.

Elizabeth, he tells himself, is an anomaly. 

 

Two weeks before Merlin went to London for University, Freya looked up and ascended into the sky. 

"I'll be back with the clouds." She said.

 

Merlin's roomie was called Gwaine. He was a loud and drunk and lecherous. And he had dibs on the best pubs and the best bars. And the best gay clubs. He loved sex and that's all there ever was to it. They shag a couple of times, but Merlin tells him he's promised to someone else.

And he doesn't have a ring to prove it.

To his horror he realizes that all of Elizabeth, all of the visual signs that made her real in his mind, had melted away and all that was left was the deep impression of blue eyes and wheat golden hair.

He joins the university LGBTQ soc, Gwaine in tow. Morgana tells him that he is a pansexual aromantic.

He disagrees with the second part. He doesn't need Morgana or anyone else to push him into a convenient compartment just because they don't get it. 

He's just about to wrap up his final year when he meets Arthur.

 

Arthur Pendragon is the enigma. (AP, he remembers, distantly, along with milk and a glass of cookies.) By day he serves coffee at the nondescript cafe across the street. By night he works for his A/levels, taking adult lessons and tutoring classmates less sharp than himself. 

He sings at The Great Dragon every other weekend, and there is something about him that allures Merlin to no end.

 

It is only when Merlin spends two pub nights staring at the singer staring back at him, that he realizes it's the eyes.

Wheat coloured hair. Blue blue eyes.

 

_Trampoline._

_Spiral staircase._

_white sheets._

_Blood on the snow angel._

 

"Yes." he says abruptly. "I think I shall."

 

"Safe sex is important." Arthur tells him. "We haven't been mutually exclusive."

"I only just found you." Merlin retorts. "Ten fucking years being God knows where doing God knows what." As Arthur leads him up the spiral staircase to the little loft he calls home.

Arthur grimaces. 

"I told him that night. He didn't take it well, I assure you."

"He said you died. In the fire, that night."

"He needed to convince himself. It was as good an excuse as any."

"You should have come to me." Arthur looks at him and smiles. It's not quite Elizabeth's, not quite the same. But it's right. "You were only a child, my love." he replies. "I had a Waterloo ahead of me."

"You faced it alone." Arthur nods stonily. His hands ghost over his chest, where his nipples are stiff and red, remembering the surgery that made it flat. 

Odd, Merlin thinks, I loved him for years and yet I don't remember thinking of him as anything but mine.

"You brave, beautiful creature." he says tenderly, capturing his mouth in a kiss that transcends time and memory and melds them, beyond all physical planes, into an ethereal oneness with each other, entwining their memories forevermore in that quiet place where all truth is lost and smothered in the crashing tide of love.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this a while back and then took it down to give it a clean up. Not much. But just enough. Do comment though if you like it. I'm a little unsure still and would love to know what you think.


End file.
